Partitioning Help

[celtic426]

I need some basic help on partitioning. I have a computer that i built myself that has windows xp on it right now. i wanna keep windows xp and have a dual boot with Elive linux. I am very new to linux so keep that in mind. In Elive there is a program called GParted. I couldn't find any real guide with google on how to do what I want so I am asking here. I would really appreciate it if someone could give detailed instrucitons on how to create a new partition and dual boot Elive and win xp. Thanks a lot.

[abhishek456]

here are a few guides to work with Gparted.

Gparted Guides

You can also download live cd/live usb version of Gparted and partion the disk before entering in to installation

Gparted downloads

[celtic426]

ok thanks for those, i read them and they were really helpful. but now can someone tell me what i need to do. I only have one hard drive right and I want to take 20 GB from that and use it for Linux, so that I don't lose anything on my windows partition. Now do I resize my drive down by 20 GB? Then does that become unallocated space or what? If that does do I create a new partition from that? Can someone just fill me in on this cause I understand how to use the program I'm just not sure what I have to do. But also another confusing factor is I think ELive wants three different partitions. This really confuses me. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[abhishek456]

i had looked at Elive review and it's really cool spilling up the mac look

I think ELive wants three different partitions.

i think every linux distro want's atleast 3 partions

--> / (root partion where your linux files get stored)

--> /home (where all the user files get stored)

--> /swap (it's similar to paging file on windows)

so you need to create 3 partions.

Then does that become unallocated space or what?

yes the new space would be raw partion and you must create a filesystem from those.

i recommend you to allocate free space now using gparted and during installation when the installer asks for partioning give it the free space you allocated for installation so that it uses only the allocated free space for linux installation and doesn't mess up with your windows space

any way it's a good way to backup things before going for installation

[celtic426]

thank you. one final thing. i am going to be doing this when i am already running ELive, because Elive has gparted already installed (i can do this right?). Do i have to unmount the drive and is that possible even if I am using that drive at that moment to run Elive? or is Elive running only from the cd? I just wanna make sure it is safe to do this partitioning while using Elive and do I have to unmount the drive? ...thanks.

[abhishek456]

no the installer takes care about every thing and you don't need to do any thing manually.

i found a review about Evine and i also had some partioning help

Elive Review